Aboriginal people are largely ignored in conventional economic history of early colonial Australia. The Aboriginal legacy is largely evident today through surviving Indigenous knowledge retained in the growing population of Indigenous Australians. This chapter builds on McLean and White by describing key economic features of the Aboriginal economy while dispelling some myths about the lack of resource management, capital investment, or task specialisation. Noel Butlin radically altered the debate about the pre-colonial Aboriginal population size and brought both economic and demographic techniques to understanding of whole Australian economy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The chapter revisits Butlin's analysis in the context of more recent literature. It then, discusses the economic prehistory of Aboriginal Australia in the early colonial period. The first contact between Aboriginal people and the outside world are also described. The total Australian population was still less than the pre-contact Aboriginal population until the gold rush brought a threefold increase in the number of colonists.

Technological change is a core component of modern economic growth. This chapter examines fundamental questions about Australia's technological development between the beginnings of European settlement and Federation. It explains the main patterns of technological change in colonial Australia. Technology is the body of practical knowledge and methods used in production and consumption. It tells us how different raw materials, equipment and skills can be brought together to yield a desirable outcome and extend an economy's production possibilities. Technological change in Australia was largely an urban phenomenon. Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth were the vibrant hearts of Australia's technological system. The emergence of professional patent agents provided further evidence of the importance that the patent system had come to assume in the market for technological ideas. The transfer of technology benefited Australia's own technological capabilities by allowing Australians to focus their creative energies on pursuits for which they had distinct advantages in terms of expertise and skill.